I am a boundary-crossing, impact-driven scholar, speaker, consultant, and creative producer with over 15 years of experience in research and public engagement. In science-practice bridging I am currently focusing on the Open Strategy Finland community (openstrategy.fi) building. 

I hold a PhD with honours from the University of Vaasa in in international management (2013) and have built an international academic career spanning five disciplines. Previous academic appointments include serving as an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia (2022-2023) and an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (2014-2017). In addition of senior researcher position in CCR, I am currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Stanford University and was affiliated to Aalto University between 2013-2025. On Fellowships, I am Newton International Fellow alumni by the Royal Society UK (2014-) and former Academy of Finland postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2019). 

Beyond traditional academia, I actively bridge science, practice, and the arts. I founded the Burning Stories science-art collective (2018-) to study the global influence of participatory culture and art communities, and I experiment with human-AI-human science-art practices together with the collective. In addition, I created the Mietekeskus concept (2023-), which blends science lectures with professional arts in festival settings. As a consultant, I have facilitated knowledge transfer and planetary design programs for organizations such as CERN IdeaSquare in planetary design program. My work has been widely featured in Finnish media (YLE, Talouselämä, Helsingin Sanomat) as well as in international outlets including the Financial Times, and I frequently deliver keynotes at global tech, creative, and academic events.

My current research in CCR focuses on open strategy, participatory decision-making, and self-management, exploring how large, heterogeneous groups can meaningfully engage in strategic and organizational processes.

In the Wallenberg-funded Open Strategy project (2023-2025) —a collaboration between Aalto University and the University of Oxford—I studied the participatory strategies of communities such as Burning Man and specialized to develop AI Delphi method as open strategy tool. I am particularly interested in collective intelligence between human experts and machines, applying the AI-Delphi method to open strategy, and understanding how organizations navigate complexity through co-creative, future-oriented methods.

Historically, my fieldwork has been in extreme environments (North Korea; Lebanon; Colombia) and explored entrepreneurship and business education. Furthermore, I investigate extremish festival communities such as Burning Man as experimental laboratories, utilizing innovative science-art methodologies to collect and disseminate qualitative data. My research has resulted in top-tier journals such as Organization Science, Journal of World Business, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and Academy of Management Discoveries

On delivering lectures and talks, my  approach integrates creative methodologies—such as theatre in the classroom, role-playing, and hands-on case work—to combine content from various disciplines.

Formal teaching portfolio includes courses on Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Universidad de Los Andes), Venture Formation, Sustainable Entrepreneurship, and Venture Ideation (Aalto University), as well as Strategic Management of Information Systems (University of Vaasa). In one of the world's most extreme contexts, I introduced the first-ever Leadership and Entrepreneurship courses inside North Korea at the Pyongyang University of Science & Technology.

Outside of traditional university courses, I specialize in designing complex, high-impact educational programs and events. I have co-founded and led community-driven entrepreneurial education initiatives like Startup Circus (blending arts with startup pitching), WTSUP! Beirut (transferring Nordic values of equality via entrepreneurship), and the first Pyongyang Startup Week. My teaching consistently bridges science-based content with a strong focus on societal impact and cross-cultural community building